What Is Fair Usage Policy (FUP)?



The Streamyx "Fair Usage Policy" is available on our website
(http://www.streamyx.com/customer_care/customer_care.php?id=customer_care_fair_usage_policy
<http://www.streamyx.com/customer_care/customer_care.php?id=customer_care_fair_usage_policy>
) and it basically describes the list of specific heavy usage activities (like P2P
and gaming) that will be managed during peak periods.



As you all know, this kind of bandwidth management or FUP is a global and common
industry practice, for both fixed and mobile players. All industry players have
traffic management in place and mobile players particularly due to their natural
capacity limitations. It is aimed at making sure broadband services are fast and
reliable whenever in use.  It is designed to benefit all users, especially normal or
non-heavy users during peak periods, so that all can enjoy fair browsing and surfing
speed.



In general, TM's FUP and implementation is aimed at providing an optimum internet
experience to all Streamyx customers by allocating the total available bandwidth to
users equitably during peak periods, especially for international connectivity.



Of late, our traffic profiles are changing and increasing quite rapidly. With no
traffic control when congestion hits, depending on the usage patterns, customers
subscribing to the same package but generating different traffic patterns may
experience different levels of service performance. With the recognition of the
increased demand in overseas content, we are also working to migrate some content to
servers within Malaysia thereby providing faster local access and at the same time
freeing up additional international bandwidth.



In an effort to ensure a fair distribution of resources amongst all customers at all
times, whenever congestion occurs, TM's network is able to calculate how many users
are active at any given time and allocate dynamically the resources across all
customers with active sessions.



In rare cases of heavy congestion, we ensure that no customers may get below a
minimum threshold of international bandwidth, but there is no 'ceiling' to the
bandwidth each customer can get.









Current Situation



After successful pilots we ran a few months ago, in the past few weeks we have been
rolling out nationwide a new traffic management model. Even though the number of
calls to our call centre notifying slow browsing or low speed did not increase, some
customers complained about their international browsing experience.



As dynamic allocation of bandwidth requires some specific settings to be fine tuned
area by area, while the majority of the customers should see improvements, it is
possible that the experience of some customers has actually worsened. We apologise
to our customers for the inconvenience this has caused. We elicit and welcome
feedback on the experience in different parts of the country at different times of
the day. We have set up an email account impact@tm.com.my <mailto:impact@tm.com.my>
, as of 1 December 2010, dedicated for this purpose. Thank you for your inputs,
speed readings and account details submitted thus far.



We are still collating all inputs from customers and analyzing the profiles to match
against the network data but have put forward an action plan to immediately
alleviate the situation.



Action Plan



Bottom line, we are listening to you and taking action on the network issues and
hope to see improvements in the coming week. We are reviewing some parameters, but
the system has to be in place due to surge in traffic during this period of school
holidays which is contributing to the increased network congestion.



We will be monitoring this very closely this coming week, to see if the above has
yielded positive results whilst constantly reviewing the parameters to ensure that
dynamic allocation is in place in order to provide fair experience for all
customers.



We will further investigate both individual cases and the service in its entirety to
address specific concerns that they may be facing, and will respond to these
customers directly.



Rest assured, TM takes note of all customer feedback to continuously ensure improved
customer experience end-to-end. We do listen and are taking action. We look forward
to further constructive feedback, and will take all comments on board to help us
make key changes.



We thank you for your kind understanding and patience as we work to deliver on our
commitment to service quality and overall customer experience.



Yours sincerely,

TM